Bucky’s animal spirit

When an unsuspecting person walks up to [Rob Ray’s] ATM machine, they are greeted with a surprise that doesn’t involve giving them their money. When they insert their card, the video above plays followed by a game where you control a beaver trying to save money during a recession. Surprisingly, people usually found it humorous and didn’t immediately freak out that their card was in a machine that wasn’t their ATM. His site has all kinds of pictures of various users as well as the construction of the project.

Neither the video nor the article say whether there was any notice to the user that their card wasn’t being scanned. Really, all that was done was to sense there was a card there. Theoretically, a library card, driver’s license, or an expired card could work just as well.

I think the hack is kind of funny, but I don’t like the message he is sending. As consumers, we shouldn’t freak out and quit spending money all together. That will only make the situation worse! Our economy depends on growth and movement. Now get out there and spend some money!

If someone were stealing card info they would use an ATM that looked like a real ATM. I think that is why people were not freaked out about it. Criminals only make flashy videos in Batman movies. On the other hand if he was a criminal he could have easily taken the CCV number off the card with a digital camera regardless of whether that number is encoded on the magstripe.

people should be freaked out about it, as why couldnt he be stealing the card details?
If anything, the machine is making people more relaxed about being done over.
What he should have done is put up a sign saying this is not a real ATM, do not insert a credit card – but then less people woulda used it

hey all, Rob here. The fellow who made the ATM. Thanks to Hack-A-Day for the post and appreciate the comments from you all.

A few comments/responses.

The ATM doesn’t scan your card, you could stick a library card in there and it would work. I’m just looking to see if you break the beam and throw the “Card Inserted” pin high.

I considered reading your name off the card and text-to-speeching it into something completely goofy but I found most cards don’t actually store your name anymore – even though it’s in the spec. Out of about 10 different bank cards I tried, only one had the name on it. And it was a fair chunk of work for only a so-so feature, so that feature hit the cutting room floor in effort to get the piece done.

People are indeed daft enough to put their card in any old machine – which is something I wasn’t sure about. It was tough to make the ATM look _enough like_ an ATM to trick people and then also be kind of crappy so people would immediately know it’s a joke once the video comes up.

Also I wanted to make the gaming interface (up, down, left, right, jump, fire) NOT obvious before inserting your card but then obvious once you knew it was a game. So I left the numbers off the buttons. Also I thought this might be one of my “outs” if I got into trouble with the law.

I was amazed how useful it is to Not Be A Dick.
I had thought it might be cool to hold the card and not give it back until the end but that would make it an entirely different statement. Also I thought that holding the card captive would be so distracting to people that they wouldn’t even want to bother playing the game. They would just be pre-occupied wondering if they were going to get their card back.

Thanks again for the comments. Feel free to fire more at me if you have any.

Also if you dig my piece you might be interested in Radical ATM Service which a friend of mine at Molleindustria helped out with and launched last month as well. It’s cool to see more ATM art out there. Heh.